That phrase in bio that also applies to tech...

Without rule of law (equal treatment under law) there is no law.

We already have established that the Sheriffs departments, ICE, CBP, DEA, FBI and DHS have no actual interest in enforcing law, rather are looking for ways to extend their own revenues. They are all criminal, and act like organized crime except that there is no tribunal in power with the authority to try them.

This gives rise to challenges to the legitimacy of the courts of law and the legislators that define what the law is, especially since both have refused to enforce integrity of law enforcement.

This is basic poly-sci: Law enforcement holds a monopoly on legitimate force on the contingency that they use that force to carry out the will of the state (and for no other cause) and only if the state's will is, by all reasonable assessment, fair and just. If the police use their force arbitrarily, in defiance of an informed court, they lose that monopoly. If the state fails to govern reasonably, they lose that monopoly.

In this case, we have both conditions. The state is arbitrary and uneven in its governance. But then the police are not even telling the courts what they do. And they lie to the court often with impunity.

Ergo, the law enforcement agencies of the US have no legitimacy in their use of force. They kill because they can and no-one is stopping them. Jungle law.

The police stay in power out of habit and because they have all the guns. They use force arbitrarily, and they don't seem to care much what the state thinks. (And it's not like the state has been showing much good governance.)

It means if someone else outgunned the police, or served the same function that the police [are supposed to] do, these new gangsters / warlords / civic-minded vigilantes would have he same legitimacy state agencies.

Still not understanding how "good faith" is seen as anything but a giveaway.

Regarding _good faith_ I'm still not sure how that is a falsifiable claim. _Every_ officer can claim good faith, and no one can prove bad faith. No police officer has ever been reprimanded for bad faith. Yeah _good faith_ only comes up when an officer needs to pretty-plead with a cherry on top.

Feinstein

Feinstein's history as far back as mayor of San Francisco has suggested she can be a short-sighted power-hungry bitch, the kind that would keep the One Ring at Gondor for safekeeping without much forethought.

So if she's the NSA's bitch because of extortion, that's a step up from mere stupidity to coercion by a malicious influence.

Despite her being my senator (and not having any better choices) I've been fighting her lack of technical savvy and willingness to pass internet-breaking laws for decades now. I could see her imagining only good people would use the NSA mass surveillance program and then only for noble causes.

I suspect there are different degrees of parallel construction.

IANAL, but there may be merit to the argument that literal parallel construction would mean the same evidence would be found by another path, say rather than a tip from the NSA based on internet surveillance (which violates Constitutional rights) then a tip from an ex-girlfriend (which...does not). The former might be quicker than the latter, and in the case of hunting a serial killer might even save a life.

But it sounds like the current use of the term parallel construction is reframing illegally obtained evidence so that it sounds more legal, such as information from NSA surveillance being delivered as an anonymous tip. That's evidence laundering.

The ultimate end to this is the public will cease to trust law enforcement, the Department of Justice and courts of law. That they cheat to secure convictions implies they have to cheat in order to secure convictions.

Conspiracies happen all the time.

A recent review of the JFK assassination acknowledged that just because we misguessed at what the conspiracies were doesn't mean conspiracies weren't happening. Rather what happens is that the public picks up on things going wrong, and then tries to piece together the plots from the few facts available. And we're bad at it.

9/11 was a conspiracy. A handful of Osama Bin Laden's Mujaheddin organized a handful of suicide hijack teams to capture airliners and use them as weapons. In a couple cases, it worked. We can only speculate whether Bin Laden meant this to be a Doolittle raid, or if this was part of a greater plot. But that's the difference between a conspiracy and an even bigger conspiracy.

Regardless, most of human civilizations went through thousands of years of monarchy by force not because they deserved it but because they never had an opportunity to change it. Also they were told for 1500 years that they'd go to Hell for eternity if they tried.

I don't think we get the government we deserve, rather we get the worst government we cannot prevent from holding power. And then we have to wait again for opportunity to choose differently.

That's not deserved justice. That's jungle law. That's the biggest monster eating and fucking its way through the rest of the jungle because nothing else stops it.

The Parallel between Guns and Encryption

Both are tools that, in the hands of the public, empower it against the state.

The FBI won't say that disarming the public would serve its interest in preserving the current regime, but plenty of law enforcement have said exactly that.

FBI's fear over encryption is that it would facilitate organization of resistance even when that resistance becomes a threat, and while a lone gunman isn't a real threat to law enforcement, a company of militia are. (And yes, some organized militia exist in the US.)

Incidentally, guns occupy the same spot, whether we call them tools or weapons. Our constitutional framers didn't specify guns but general arms that is, weapons, knowing that even firearms may someday become obsolete. The point is the public cannot trust the state to keep something that the public is forbidden from having, including bioagents and nukes.

(Which is a good reason, incidentally, for the military to stop making bioagents and nukes, and yet they still do.)

And yes, you can argue that the people are not mature enough to be trusted with guns. But the same is true for the police and the military. Frankly, we can't be trusted with the responsibility of voting or knowing our best interests, but then who can we trust?

And that's why the people should have full access to guns, even if they're useless.

And this very same argument can be made regarding encryption. And secret communication can be as deadly as guns, if not worse.

You first, fed.

The government (which is to say practically all departments) over classify and intentionally obstruct FOIA requests. They act to prevent public oversight and they like to keep it that way.

Once we establish thorough public oversight of our state's departments at every level, and all things that are not current operational secrets, are transparent and easily accessible to an American citizen Then and not one day sooner should we talking about making private entities more transparent to the government. The government in general and the FBI specifically are completely corrupt, and we have no reason to trust them with private information, even when they threaten to beat it out of us (which they will).

So, no. The feds can have my encryption codes and my private files when it figures out how to pry them from my cold dead brain.

Useful notes on Human Trafficking

Kidnapping kids into trafficking is rare in industrialized nations. Typically, they don't grab children piecemeal, rather capture entire villages, children and adults alike, and selling those not viable for sexual slavery into labor (and killing anyone not viable). It happens quite a bit in Central and South America, and abduction for trafficking is a common end to many who are deported from the United States if they don't have sufficient roots in their destination country. (Exasperated when many get deported to an entirely non-native country.)

From there, children are sold to brothels in places like Thailand, Indonesia or Columbia (to name a couple). Trafficked prostitutes average a lifespan of seven years in captivity. No they aren't treated well.

In the United States, teens are trafficked from broken homes and lower class neighborhoods in which parents don't have the time or means to watch over them. Groomers watch for kids for symptoms of dysfunction and then promise them a better life. A few gifts and restaurant meals are commonly enough to seal the deal.

That's when the victim is driven to another town and forced to work. Sometimes they're broken in via a drug addiction, but in many cases, threats, promises and the beat-down/honeymooning routine will keep them in line. Then they typically make for their respective pimps about a $1000 a day while on duty.

Human Trafficking in the US is a symptom of our system of debt-servitude, where a person needs to work full time to sustain themselves, let alone sustain children. Parents have to work full time and come home exhausted and unable to parent. But we're not going to change that without major society reform:

Create a society where a parents can raise kids with part time work, and not come home exhausted, so they have both time and energy to engage their progeny.

Create a society in which the community watches over and cares about kids not their own, so it confronts bullies and mischief, so it addresses dysfunctional homes.

Do that, and sex trafficking vanish.

But right now our society puts people into debt and forces them to work themselves exhausted just to live.

Our entire society is based on servitude. Human Sex Trafficking is par for the course. It just happens to be one that we can't bare to look at. But that is the course our nation chose, much like letting Trump and the GOP get into office.

Human Traffickers

Nope. They're real. And they've found trafficking reaches more paying johns through free-ad sites like Craigslist and Backpage.

But charging Craigslist and Backpage (both of whom have been more than happy to cooperate with law enforcement to track down pimps) is like charging car companies for supplying bank robbers with getaway cars.

Yes, trafficking is a real problem (though it is difficult to determine how many unreported incidents there are). This is just a really bad way to approach it. It's not going to catch pimps, but it will kill a lot of legitimate internet businesses that are useful to a lot of people. And it will do so on the grounds that those businesses might be useful to pimps.

So yeah, the getaway cars proverb applies: We're shutting down the automotive industry because criminals may find cars useful.